It’s hard enough for humans to meet one another and interact, which is most likely why social networks and dating sites rose to prominence. Cruising around the city in your sweet 1995 red T-Top Camaro just doesn’t cut it for us humans anymore, but now thanks to science, male silkmoths get to experience what it’s like to prowl the town for some fly honeys. A team of scientists at the University of Tokyo created a two-wheeled robot that was driven by male silkmoths attempting to find a female mate.

The male silkmoth was chosen because of its complex mating rituals, which involves a complicated dance, as well as sophisticated odor-sensing capability. In order to test out the robot, a puff of pheromones was placed into one end of a tunnel, while the moth was strapped into the two-wheeled vehicle and placed downwind at the other end. The moth was suspended over a polystyrene ball that itself was suspended on air, and the vehicle contained two small fans that helped waft the pheromones up to the moth so he could be driven sufficiently wild.

When the moth noticed the pheromones, he would move his little legs as if he weren’t strapped into a moth-mech, and that would spin the ball. The sensor in an optical mouse was then used to detect the movements of the ball and send them off to the robot, which would in turn mimic the movements.

The unit was tested with a total of 14 male moths, and each of them were able to pilot the vehicle, as well as end up at the source of the pheromones. Scientists even threw the moths a curveball, and caused the mothbots to pull to one side, but the moths were able to make up for the error.

The point of this experiment was thankfully not to voyeuristically watch some moths creep on each other, but to gather data in order to create an artificial brain that could pilot a similar vehicle in a manner as sophisticated as the moth-piloted one.